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Wisconsin, a Republican Haven, Finds Itself Split

PEWAUKEE, Wis. — In the battle for control of the Senate, this state would seem to have everything Republicans could dream of: a shift to red up and down the ballot in 2010, a Republican governor who decisively survived a recall effort a few months ago, and a local son turned vice-presidential nominee.

Yet with Election Day fast approaching, Representative Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who has been rated among the most liberal members of Congress, finds herself about even in the polls with the Republican candidate, former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, who once ran for president, and who not long ago was widely presumed to walk away with the open Senate seat here.

Even Ms. Baldwin acknowledged the other day that she had been taken by surprise — “I pinched myself and said, ‘What?’ ” — when polls began tipping her way. But the election here is a reminder that advertising matters (no matter how much voters complain about it), that people make choices on individual candidates (not only party ideology), and perhaps most of all, that Wisconsin, like some of the other Midwestern states that moved toward the Republicans in 2010, may remain relatively evenly split along partisan lines.

“That’s where we’re really misunderstood,” said Jef Hall, Winnebago County’s Democratic Party chairman, pointing to his county seat, Oshkosh, among a long list of communities that can be tipped. “When it comes down to it, we’re really a 50-50 city in a 50-50 county in a 50-50 state.”

Ms. Baldwin is a strong backer of President Obama’s policies, while Mr. Thompson, who served as health and human services secretary under President George W. Bush, denounces the new health care law and warns that the country is sliding miserably toward disaster.

Ms. Baldwin, 50, who would be the first female senator from Wisconsin and the first openly gay senator, won her first election to Congress in 1998, the last year that Mr. Thompson, who was elected to four terms as governor, appeared on the ballot in Wisconsin.

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Former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, a Republican running for Senate in Wisconsin.Credit
Darren Hauck for The New York Times

Ms. Baldwin is soft-spoken to the point that listeners must actually lean in at times to hear her. Mr. Thompson, 70, on a recent evening stood before a crowd in this Milwaukee suburb at an annual event known as “Grazing With the Elephants” pounding on a lectern, roaring “Isn’t it great to be a Republican?” and, threatening to drop to the ground to do push-ups.

A Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll of likely voters in Wisconsin, conducted in the last week, showed Ms. Baldwin favored by 48 percent of those polled compared with 46 percent for Mr. Thompson, a difference that falls within the margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The results are a switch from August, when polls showed Mr. Thompson ahead. That was the month he emerged from a fierce, crowded and costly Republican primary with about 34 percent of the vote — and a debt of about $600,000, he said. Ms. Baldwin had no primary challenger, so while the Thompson campaign tried to refill its coffers, her campaign was quickly able to run a series of mostly unanswered television ads.

“It’s like standing in a boxing match with your hands tied behind you, and just getting slugged until they get tired of hitting you,” Mr. Thompson said in a recent interview. “Even Vince Lombardi, after four weeks of that kind of barrage, would have weakened,” he continued.

Beneath all of this is the question of where Wisconsin, arguably the most politically volatile state in recent years, stands now.

While the new poll said that Mr. Obama has a narrow edge in the state, Republicans here note that he and his surrogates have traveled to Wisconsin lately. They argue that while Democrats have won the presidential contest here since 1988, Representative Paul D. Ryan’s presence on the Republican ticket makes a difference. “He’s our rock star: so genuine and so darn nice,” said Mike Herl, chairman of the Dane County Republican Party.

But others say that Wisconsin voters have always been split and always will be, and that a vote in June to turn back a recall effort against Gov. Scott Walker was less a sign of Republicans’ dominance in the state than of “disquiet,” in the words of Dick Pas, the Democratic chairman in Waukesha County, with the broad notion of recall.

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Mr. Thompson's opponent is Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat.Credit
Darren Hauck for The New York Times

The back-and-forth of the ads in the Senate race has grown overwhelming, voters here say, with anti-Thompson ads portraying him as a politician from another era who has abandoned Wisconsin for Washington and anti-Baldwin ads portraying her as more left-leaning than Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader.

As of July, when federal financial reports were last filed, Ms. Baldwin’s campaign had raised about $7 million compared with about $2.5 million by Mr. Thompson’s campaign, but spending by outside groups on both sides has been still larger.

Mr. Thompson, usually gregarious, sounds anything but upbeat as he talks about his reason for running now. Is he having fun? No, he says twice. “I don’t need this,” he said.

“The only reason I’m running is because I want to keep this country fiscally sound,” he continued, beginning a bleak description of the economic crisis ahead without an end to partisan gridlock in Washington.

Ms. Baldwin’s sexual orientation has barely been mentioned along the campaign trail by either side. “There are reasons for both campaigns to leave the issue alone — somewhat out of uncertainty,” said Charles Franklin, a political scientist whose Marquette Law School polling has suggested growing support on issues like same-sex marriage in Wisconsin, a state that in 2006 passed an amendment limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

At one point, a campaign adviser to Mr. Thompson sent out an e-mail including a link to a video of Ms. Baldwin dancing during a gay pride event in Madison. Mr. Thompson later told reporters that his aide had erred in sending the e-mail and that sexual orientation was not an issue in the election.

Ms. Baldwin has drawn support from groups like LPAC, a lesbian “super PAC,” but she also says that matters like how to get ahead and how to get a job are what voters care about most.

Still, Ms. Baldwin recalled a formative moment of her own, watching a tiny television from an efficiency apartment in 1984 as Geraldine A. Ferraro received the vice-presidential nomination, the first woman to do so for a major party. “The firsts also send a strong message,” she said, “to those who may think, ‘Can I do anything I want?’ ”

Allison Kopicki contributed to this story from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on October 11, 2012, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: A Republican Haven Is Finding Itself Split. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe